by Laura Bianco and Erica Elfstrom
Selection #1
LIVING MASCULINITY
Some ways of living masculinity.
Reasonable
Canada | 4'
directed by Justin Beaulieu
Three inner voices collide through a narration: An analytical thinker, a proud rebel and a wounded child tell the story of a lingering father-son conflict. While the rebel fantasizes of confronting his father once and for all, the thinker seeks to prove to himself that he is indeed right. The injured child, meanwhile, only wants to play with his dad.
Al Atlal (The Ruins)
Lebanon | 15' 37"
directed by Raed Rafei
In a French travel book to the Middle East, a drawing of an ancient bathhouse sparks a visual poem inspired by the Arab poetic tradition of "standing by the ruins." Pleasure and pain, seduction and domination, homoeroticism and violence, archives and ruins, and histories of sex and empire all commingle in this essay film.
Once I Passed
Germany | 10'
directed by Martin Gerigk
Walt Whitman is one of the most important poets in American literature. His main work, Leaves of Grass, was written over a period of forty years, and describes human nature, society, and the natural world, both physically and philosophically. Many have speculated about Whitman's private life, to this day. Whitman never wrote publicly about his personal relationships. In 1860, he published his poem "Once I Passed Through a Populous City", an aphoristic account of a romantic relationship with an unknown woman. In 1925, the original handwritten copy of the poem was discovered, in which Whitman writes, however, not about a woman but about an affair with a man in an anonymous city, which may have been his first physical experience of love. Whitman did not dare to publish the original version of his poem, because of the social prejudices of his time. To this day, only the altered version is printed in most anthologies. "Once I passed" is dedicated, on the one hand, to the obviously autobiographical context with all its personal drama, and on the other hand to the content of the poem itself, the profoundly quiet, yet powerful story of two lovers.
SEE ME: A WALK THROUGH LONDON'S GAY SOHO IN 1994 AND 2020
UK | 7'
directed by Lee Campbell
The film was made during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in London in July 2020. This film includes sections of a walk that I made through Soho, London. As I walk, I listen on headphones to the compilation music tapes that I made when I first came to this area as a teenager in the 1990s. I reflect upon the difference between me in 1994 and me in 2020 and how my relationship to this area of London has changed, may no longer have the same appeal as it did in 1994 or a different kind of appeal in 2020. As I walk down the streets that were so important in shaping my life as a young gay man living in London, I revisit the gay bars and pubs that have been my safe spaces for the last twenty years and more, spaces that are now closed. In this ‘new normal,’ what spaces are available for queer people to perform their visibility? What is the future of those spaces that I discovered on my walk that are currently closed? Will the queer people that once inhabited these spaces become invisible/unseen as their safe spaces have disappeared?
Men At Work
Finland | 6' 1"
directed by Panu Johansson
This found-footage based film describes one average workday in the factory environment. With a little fast-wind everything around, the machines and the people working with them, becomes one. The industrial atmosphere is completed with the audio-track, which has been compiled from ready-made loops and samples.
As Light, As Flashes
Finland | 4' 5"
directed by Hanna-Mari Ihalainen
poem by Jussi Kiova
As Light, As Flashes is about a young man helplessy falling in love with the ever-present glossy images that we see everyday wherewer we walk in the city. This love is distant, naive and fiercely erotic, yet more importantly unsullied by natural human interaction. However, the man is fully aware of all this, and willingg to fall into that hollowest of holes...
Selection #2
LIVING FEMININITY
Some ways of living femininity.
A Love Song in Spanish
France | 23' 36"
directed by Ana Elena Tejera
A performance between the director and her grandmother to confront the domestic dictatorship of their family.
Upwards Tide
Austria | 5' 30"
directed by Daniela Zahlner
Filmed between 2017 and 2021 on nights and days of the Full Moon; between the salt water shores of Loch Carron, the Scottish Highlands and the autumnal leaves of the Viennese forests. There are overlapping sounds, bodies and moonlight, gathering together like sediment on outdated stock, short ends and leftovers, gifted to me by friends and colleagues.
Because Goddess Is Never Enough
UK | 10'
directed by Jane Glennie
Who was Tilly Losch? Dancer, artist, choreographer, lover, wife, muse … Tilly seems a blur, glimpsed at the corner of the eye, dancing in and out of focus. Because Goddess is Never Enough explores the elusive and fragmentary nature of Tilly’s life and evokes the spirit of the 1920s–40s when she was at the peak of her fame. Tilly Losch was an Austrian dancer who worked with prominent, and cutting-edge, choreographers and artists in the UK and the US, from the West End to Hollywood. She was also a choreographer in her own right, who later turned to painting. The film is about self-worth, the authentic self, and the credibility of creative women – Losch was someone who was at times exploited yet determined to maintain a path of her own making despite the obstacles that were very much present in her era. The parallels of Losch and the way women are still portrayed in the in the 21st century through the lens of the media and by society forms a powerful and thought-provoking statement about female identity. It highlights how far women have come in 90 years, and yet how far they still have to go to get recognition and true independence. ‘Because Goddess is never enough’ asks questions about biographies of women (and their complex lives!) who fall into the footnotes, lost from history as so many women’s stories are, seen only through a patriarchal lens, illuminating and reclaiming women’s stories.
The Kettle
Canada | 4'
directed by Héloise Bargain
In a letter to her aggressor, a young woman describes all the abuses she would, in turn, inflict on him. Authenticity and violence reverse the victim-culprit relationship in this autobiographical work.
We Had Each Other
USA | 14' 45"
directed by Kelly Gallagher
Sisterhood and solidarity nourished the thirty-two Irish Republican women POWs at Armagh Gaol (Jail) in 1980, as they embarked on a transgressive, challenging, and oft-overlooked No-Wash protest against British Colonialism.
Unborn
USA | 5'
directed by Sascha Marie Speer
Shot entirely underwater, Unborn is a poetic journey about becoming a mother. About grief and loss. Hope and wonder. What if a woman cannot conceive? What if she loses a pregnancy? Can she still fulfill her dream? This film immerses the audience in those emotions through an original score and stunning visuals. We are brought into the heart and soul of the protagonist as she navigates the worlds of her reality and dreams.
The Girl Who Is
USA | 6' 16"
directed by Sara Sowell
text by Kirsten Schmid
I’m not like other girls
People say that
But for me
Its true because
I don’t have a body
I’m just one element
Of the psyche
Conjuring Freud's id while watching America's Next Top Model. Black & white 16mm digital transfer hand-processed in Milwaukee, WI.
Selection #3
PROCESSING HERITAGE
How to deal with what you receive from your parents?
Pneuma
France | 29' 14"
directed by Fanny Béguély
The storm rumbles, a bed sinks into the night. My mother, sisters, brother and I share stories of humans and plants. In the old days, we used to cling to the trees to heal. In the old days, we used to burn for our medicines. Under the reflections of a moon, foliage moves with the naked eye, bacteria fertilize the air and herbariums threaten: the day will come when the world will turn upside down.
The Witch Hunt
Canada | 4'
directed by David Sanchez
Being a single mother of four is a full-time job, especially when you become homeless. Between waiting for the next social welfare cheque and meetings with the child protective services (DPJ) worker, there’s not much else left to do to maintain one’s dignity: resist.
Parallelism, or How to Live Next to Others
France | 11'
directed by Jade Marchandeau
Through an eclectic collage of private footage, recorded conversations and snippets of poetic prose, Parallelism or how to live next to others explores the temporal and spatial connections existing between past memories and our ability to keep living/being. In between France and Israel, love and loss, silence and words, this movie offers a touching overview of what it feels like to be stuck in-between.
The Carrier Bag
USA | 23' 19"
directed by Sarina Hahn
Titled after an essay by science fiction writer Ursula K. LeGuin on the relationship between narrative and technology, this experimental diaristic essay film explores the tension between the desire to hold onto or capture life, and the excessive flux of the endlessly transforming world. The digitized VHS video centers around the intimate relationship between the filmmaker and their father, a rabbinic chaplain at a local hospital, as a way into asking questions about spirituality and death, narrative structure, and how the mediating lenses we look through turn back to shape the stories that hold us.
Re:exposure
UK | 10' 18"
directed by Vicky Smith
The film is a reflection on exposure, of skin to sun and of film to light, and the environmental, ecological, social and hereditary factors that impact the aging process. Textures of the skin filmed in extreme close up appear in single or short frame bursts, and, accompanied by percussive sounds, create a fast paced rhythmic journey around the surface of the body. This film is then seen at a later stage, as a filmstrip manually reexamined on a light box, alongside spoken analysis of the exposure times. Then, old photos of my mother, and her mother, on the beach, are seen in close-up. The DIY analogue film processing method gives this material a burnt brown look, while the inclusion of ‘mistakes’, such as fogged and scratched sections, emphasize the sense of exposure and damage to skin and to film material.
Fuck Film: A Love Story
USA | 2' 35"
directed by Neil Ira Needleman
Faux autobiography leveraging a grainy looped image from an old VHS porn movie, enticingly cropped to add ambiguity and intrigue. This may be my most sentimental and nostalgic movie yet. I must be getting older.
Selection #4
THE ANCESTORS IN ME
Old stories and images still live in you. Some films to rediscover the past and what is left.
In Search of Foreign Objects
USA | 5' 49"
directed by Michelle Levy
Shot, animated, and written over the course of one cycle of IVF treatment, "In Search for Foreign Objects" touches on an intimate moment in a woman's life as she walks throughout her city, reflecting on ancestry, biology, displacement, erasure, and time.
Via Karelia
Finland | 12' 35"
directed by Elian Mikkola
Tracing back a lost identity hidden in the forests of this abandoned war zone.
Standing on a sandy beach, looking in the direction where the old lighthouse once stood, reminding the people of this village where home is, every 15 seconds. How does trauma get carried on from a generation to another, and is there a way to stop the cycle? The filmmaker tries to understand how to heal from the pressures of the past by searching for their grandmother's childhood home. Taking the journey with their parents, they find themselves in a village located in the old Karelia, now a part of Russia.
A Pigeon's Song
Belgium | 16' 12"
directed by Eneos Çarka
Awake each morning by the voice of a pigeon, the filmmaker reads his great-grandfather's prison diary. He learns that a pigeon accompanied him too while he wrote. This solitary, timeless pigeon fills the gaps of what is forgotten, awaking unspoken family wounds.
Firewash
UK | 4' 7"
directed by Sarah Tremlett
Firewash as both a poem and poetry film, is a conversation with an ancestor who mined at a site where there was manganese, in Cornwall in the 12th century. The poem (published in Earth Lines anthology, Autumn 2021) is based on the author’s experience of staying at the same location during a gale. It is taken from Tree a geopoetic family history and poetry film project across different periods and locations.
Houariyates
Canada | 3' 55"
directed by Laïla Mestari
'Look Laïla, these are the women of your hometown.' The dizzying descent from the word 'hometown' to the recesses of my mind plunges me into a state of contemplation. This text message brings back all sorts of stories about my country of origin. I anchor my gaze in the eye of the camera. These women are Houariyates and their music resonates in the blood running through my veins. Solemnly, I present them to you and they dance. They dance between my hands and then my hands respond. They dance in a spruce forest and then the river responds. They dance in a sea of hyperlinks and then the Web surfers respond.
My own dance has irregular rhythms and strange postures. It exists somewhere between Chicoutimi and Tiznit and doesn't know how to define itself. My song is that of accumulated materials and colliding images. In this short video, in which each element unveils another, what keeps me most entertained is to endlessly question who I am.
At one point they were the same person
Spain | 22' 46"
directed by Victoria Oliver Farner
My mother's idioms, sententious as the proverbial wisdom of the Delphic oracle, repeated and incessant as the hammer on the anvil, are the inheritance left to her by her father and which make up, in my imagination, the mythical land of her childhood.
It begins with roots
UK | 10'
directed by Lin Li
With a narrative which meanders between factual information and personal reflection, "It begins with roots" is a video essay using the roots of Banyan trees as the starting point for more contemplative associations. Drawing on the artist’s own experience, this video touches on a number of themes including migration, otherness, and impermanence and mortality.
Selection #5
SOMEONE TOLD ME
Imagining the future and the past.
Sleep of Trees
India | 11' 23"
directed by Shivam Kaushik
Traditionally Rajasthani folktales are mostly based around deserted landscapes, where a boy/man makes a voyage across distant lands(videsh) in a hope of fortunes while in such folktales the females either wait for his return or he establishes himself in the distant lands. Practically, Jaipur being a capital city is different from such landscapes. Jaipur comparatively is greener and its cityscapes have touched New Delhi’s modernity sooner than any other city within Rajasthan. The film documents the city landscapes and experiments it with creating folklore, where to sleep properly men make a pact with the moon to turn their women into trees.
World War III
Spain | 15'
directed by Lluís Nadal
In a lost piece of land an old man spends an afternoon alone. Inert in his chair, about to speak or move but never quite doing so, he's the only human in this strange landscape. The animals are acting weird and the wind never stops - World War III has started.
The Red Tide
USA | 8' 10"
directed by Sally Lawton
The Red Tide follows my mother on a life changing move to Florida. Her new home is located near famous earthworks by Robert Smithson, the enormous art collection-turned-museum of John Ringling, and beaches plagued by a toxic phenomenon called the ‘red tide’. Beginning with a recreation of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson’s 1969 film, Swamp, the film describes a confusion between multiple anxieties: art’s legacy, climate change, and a longing to stay connected.
Gaurav Has Left
India | 2' 56"
directed by Anuj Malhotra
'Gaurav Chale Gaya' ('Gaurav Has Left') describes an incident in a residential colony in Noida, a suburb of the national capital, New Delhi, where a boy disappears overnight. The film employs this abrupt upheaval to contemplate an entire year marked by exodus, movement, immigration, disappearance, loss, and finally, reclamation. The voice in the film reflects on our collective civilisational capacity to face and process grief, the refuge we seek in ritualistic performance, and eventually, in philosophy. It contends also that while the event may seem apocalyptic, it is merely a part of a larger continuum - not a severance in time, but its sustenance. The location of the film in Noida is relevant too, for it remains a township in a state of perpetual flux: houses, colonies, settlements, flyovers, malls and roads come up and disappear overnight - all of it seems familiar, but also, at the same time, alien.
Stories We Will Be
Italy | 20'
directed by Daniele Atzeni, Marco Bertozzi, Claudio Casazza, Giulia Cosentino, Irene Dionisio, Martina Melilli, Matteo Zadra
Where to start, if not from our memory, to imagine the future after this global emergency? In the period of isolation caused by Covid-19, in which we have all witnessed a time as hard as suspended, seven authors try in their own way to ask themselves inspiration from this fragile present, looking at the past without nostalgia to reflect on what we has been denied and imagine the world as it will be, or The stories we will be. With the invitation not to create new images, intimate and domestic, but to work starting from already existing materials, made available from the archives of the family films, this short film makes explicit the potential of documentary cinema, close to the world but far from actuality.
In the Future
USA | 3' 39"
directed by Kelly Gallagher
Knowing that another world is possible, individuals young and old share their hopes and dreams for the future.
Selection #6
CAMERA POETRY
One should never forget that video cameras, like all image-making tools, are never neutral devices. They always show us their unique point of view and perception of reality.
Despite Everything
Italy | 6' 30"
directed by Alessandro Focareta
We are in the first lockdown of 2020; the video camera represents a lifeline against the uncertainty and fear of the moment. Filming is a way to reconstruct another world, an alternative observation to the dominant vision. The camera becomes a device with a thousand resources. That is how the digital focus of a video camera becomes an opportunity to reflect on the power of this instrument, the produced images and its ability to reveal unexpected situations. The images that emerge give an account of a world made of folds and cracks, behind which hides a reality capable of surprising the contemporary viewer, distracted from observation and reflection.
Death by fantasies by mirrors
Canada | 13'
directed by Charlotte Clermont
Of the morning, early, magnificent grave. Bewilderment, infatuated by sleep, passion, sunburned mouths, looking for antidotes. Otherwise, if not, long enough to keep the loves. Bird, rupture, mauve, white robin, very untraceable thing. Fill the air with rose or liquid water, falling, flowing. Wet with dew, watered fresh. Of roses, of pink color, rosy, ruddy, honey purple, crimson. Small beak. Buzzing of bees, noise; whispering. Of silk. Water clock. Day, daytime. Climate sky. Seduce, separate, divide eleven at a time. Outburst, cruelty. To see often or usually in yellow. This is unbearable, stuns. Death in 4, death in 2, worthless instructions to get away from things, to avoid reflections. Pressure, compression of the lips.
Optima
UK | 2'
directed by Maximilian Adam Mitchell
An experimental animation piece driven by the medium of scanography. Exploring light and physical space through the use of a flatbed scanner, physical objects are reinterpreted through their refracted components to reveal aesthetic qualities that are absent to the human eye. Individual scans are stitched together in frame animations, attempting to make sense of - and give life to - the common unpredictability of this process of image-making. A collaboration between human and computed input.
Prometheus
USA | 3' 30"
directed by Dominic Angerame
A continuation in a series of films that I call "A City Symphony".
Selection #7
HYPNAGOGIA
In that transitional state from wakefulness to sleep, images start to appear. Memories? Phantasies? Other worlds?
Beauty and the Beasts
Hong Kong | 3' 32"
directed by Aggie Pak Yee Lee
A lady met a lovely beast, a slimy one.
Space
USA | 4'
directed by Jing Wang, Harvey Goldman
Between the horror and the ecstasy,
Between memory and motivation,
Between our wisdom and our ignorance.
Between where you are and where you are not.
The vacuous dark matter, primeval singularity,
filled with infinite possibilities.
Before the beginning and after the end.
The vortex that is now.
The Atoms of Reality
Canada | 3' 59"
directed by Marco Joubert
It was like a dream, filled with grave perfumes, with limpidity and sensuous chimes. A misplaced device in a turbid instant where the mechanisms of humility ring out. A crack obscurely revealing the entrails of nothingness. The memory of surfaces hit by translucent instruments. A well where the atoms of reality loudly dissolve. It was like a dream, filled with grave perfumes.
Untitled [\Requiem]
Austria | 8' 56"
directed by Magdalena Salner
In Untitled [\Requiem] a man dressed in a black suit with an umbrella wanders through a mountainscape which is partly covered with snow. The barren landscape doesn’t seem stable and keeps changing constantly. Over time holes and gapes emerge and uncover the pixels which the digital image is made of. Symbols like the moon, crystals or water create a dream-like feel. The music spreads out a web of trumpet-like sounds which evokes the feeling of movement. At the same time manipulated vocal and orchestral passages are woven into this fabric. The contrasting sound surface becomes increasingly blurred and forms new patterns. In the experimental film Untitled [\ Requiem], video artist Magdalena Salner and composer Manuel Baumer develop a visual and musical composition. Music and video act independently on the basis of a common form and yet remain connected. In Untitled [\Requiem] a man dressed in a black suit with an umbrella wanders through a mountainscape which is partly covered with snow. The barren landscape doesn’t seem stable and keeps changing constantly. Over time holes and gapes emerge and uncover the pixels which the digital image is made of. Symbols like the moon, crystals or water create a dream-like feel. The music spreads out a web of trumpet-like sounds which evokes the feeling of movement. At the same time manipulated vocal and orchestral passages are woven into this fabric. The contrasting sound surface becomes increasingly blurred and forms new patterns. In the experimental film Untitled [\ Requiem], video artist Magdalena Salner and composer Manuel Baumer develop a visual and musical composition. Music and video act independently on the basis of a common form and yet remain connected.
Because the Sky is Blue
USA | 3' 24"
directed by Wenhua Shi
A short piece tributes to my hometown Wuhan, China. All source footage is from Wenhua's childhood friends' social media 15-second video feed. Muybridge captured the galloping horse one hundred forty years ago in a brief 12 frames. The duration of today's social media video clips is similar to Muybridge's breavity. Wenhua tries to reimagine what subject Muybridge would capture today. He used the cyanotype method to reprint the individual frames to create the final short videos. A short piece tributes to my hometown Wuhan, China. All source footage is from Wenhua's childhood friends' social media 15-second video feed. Muybridge captured the galloping horse one hundred forty years ago in a brief 12 frames. The duration of today's social media video clips is similar to Muybridge's breavity. Wenhua tries to reimagine what subject Muybridge would capture today. He used the cyanotype method to reprint the individual frames to create the final short videos.
Self-portrait in hell
Canada | 3' 30"
directed by Federica Foglia
This hybrid piece is a collage created assembling both analog and digital material.
Several layers of 8mm films merge to create a camera-less self-portrait of the filmmaker. The first layer is an 8mm orphan film (found footage) from the 1970s of a woman dancing. The second layer is an 8mm found footage film that has been buried in earth for some months. While being covered in earth, the film emulsion has been eaten by the bacterias in the ground, plus some bacterias from yeast and sugar. This technique was originally used by the Schmelzdahin group in Germany.
After several weeks in soil, the film gets extracted, rinsed, and scanned via a 4K digital scanner. The third layer is an 8mm home movie that has been first decayed in soil, using the aforementioned technique, then hand-painted with ink.
Selection #8
NATURE AND US
Nature speaks to those who know how to listen to it.
Gladiolus
Iran | 5' 13"
directed by Azadeh Navai
An ode to a flower that once enjoyed prominence in Iranian culture, Gladiolus tells the story of its ubiquitous role in life’s important ceremonies and how it became a victim of its own popularity.An ode to a flower that once enjoyed prominence in Iranian culture, Gladiolus tells the story of its ubiquitous role in life’s important ceremonies and how it became a victim of its own popularity.
Datura's Aubade
USA | 17' 40"
directed by Jean-Jacques Martinod, Bretta C. Walker
A farmer discovers a fallen meteorite in the high Chihuahua Desert. The Alien Earth and the Earth Alien commingle under the spell of a deadly nightshade.
A Landscape to be Invented
USA | 12' 7"
directed by Josh Weissbach
Other than the ocean, the rest of the planet was bathed in purple, which was due to the color of the vegetation. The change in the sun's radiation had probably caused the plants to evolve as they adapted to the new light.
Disparition(s)
France | 3' 25"
directed by Camille Pueyo
Written during the confinement of March 2020, this film combines reflections on the gender-based violence suffered by the director with her reflections on the imminent disappearance of the island of her childhood. Patriarchal capitalism pushes them to withdraw from the world, to find shelter far from their assailants. But for both of them, is there anything other than disappearance as a survival technique?
Fragile Dream
Canada | 20'
directed by Isabelle Hayeur
This video was filmed in Australia, in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. The title refers to "Dreamtime" as the central theme of Aboriginal culture. In their conception of the world, all forms of life are part of a dynamic system of complex interactions. The earth, men, animals and plants are only parts of the same whole. Plunged into an unprecedented environmental crisis we know that this ideal remains an abstraction, a distant dream. Perhaps it is the Western worldview that has caused the imbalances that are now leading to disaster.
The Drop
Sweden | 1' 19"
directed by Per-Anders Agdler
The drop reflects Sweden's largest waterfall, Tännforsen.
Abysmal
Colombia | 2' 41"
directed by Nohora Milena Morales Karen Bohórquez Pedraza
Abysmal is to reach to the deepest insight into being by conecting body, symbols and imagination. Technically it is a visual play of verse in movement.
The Stream XI
Japan | 7' 50"
directed by Hiroya Sakurai
In the man-made waterways of rice paddies, the water in nature must follow artificial rules. In that way, nature is made abstract, giving rise to a new form of beauty distinct from the natural state. The theme of this work is the liveliness of water as it follows the man-made course. In episode 11 of The Stream, I consider why water streams are created. Water flowing through waterways is necessary for the cultivation of crops. Agricultural products are mainly produced for human consumption and are sold and distributed in the marketplace, where crops are cultivated again with the profits are earned. It is the economy and the distribution of goods that create the flow of water, which circulates in society through transportation and information networks.Fields are separated by transportation networks and rivers. Waterways are laid out to transport water from rivers to farmland like blood vessels. The transportation network, which governs logistics including the distribution of agricultural products, is connected to highways and rises as a monument in a giant circle. On the highways there is a never-ending stream of vehicles traveling and circulating to maintain human society. In addition, fields are home to a diverse range of living organisms, forming ecosystems that utilize the environment created by human society.
Desastres Naturales
Chile | 25'
directed by Andrea Novoa
Desastres Naturales is the encounter of three movies, three territories. A personal story that portrays, through experiments revealed by images and extracts from a diary, lived meetings and inhabited places filled by forces of nature, colors, incidents and struggles. Filmed in Cuba and Chile. Dedicated to Lena.
Selection #9
INSPIRED BY
Four films inspired by other's artworks.
Memento
Russia | 12'
directed by Kornej Rokotyan-Sokol'skij
The film is dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca and is solved in the key of elegiac dramatic fantasy. The film is filled with symbolic references to Lorca's oeuvre which is sewed by the theme of love and death.
One Should Never Be Cured
Japan | 8' 30"
directed by Vincent Guilbert
"How hopeless it is
It would be better for me to sink beneath the waves
Perhaps then I could see my beloved from the Moon Capital"
A super 8 rendition of a 19th century woodblock print by Japanese artist Yoshitoshi.
America (I Wanted to)
USA | 5' 32"
directed by Matt Mullins
Allen Ginsberg's poem "America" re-imagined in the 21st Century.
Hinged
Netherlands | 3' 4"
directed by Milla can der Have
Hinged is a videopoem based on the 'Creature Maquette' artwork by Lygia Clark.
Selection #10
OBSERVING OTHERS
Looking at others from a distance allows you to grasp different things.
Human Walkers in Motion
Belgium | 10'
directed by Ethann Néon
The walk inhabits our being and governs our social space. Side by side or face to face, it implies an exchange. When combining everyone’s specific pace, a hidden harmony arises. Reconnecting with Eadweard Muybridge‘s work, this film projects us into the frenetic rhythm of the steps of fifty walkers.
Us Outside
Spain | 15'
directed by Lluís Nadal
Some mysteries happen in a small city town. Some people notice, other's don't.
Un-Tidal
USA | 10'
directed by Masha Vlasova
An experimental film essay about a found (stolen?) photograph, a hurricane, and film’s inherent ability to animate and re-animate still, dead, and inanimate beings, images, and objects. The film is created using an ink-jet direct-on-film technique where the digital frame is printed directly onto onto recycled 16mm celluloid.
Bayside Reporter
Australia | 4' 8"
directed by Ian Gibbins
Overheard conversations and suspicions of criminal activity along the beachfront... What actually happened? Can you trust what you read in the newspaper or see in the evening television news? Filmed between St Kilda and Port Melbourne, Victoria. Sounds were recorded beside Melbourne’s Yarra River, on trams between the City of Melbourne and the bayside suburb of Middle Park, and along the beachfront itself.
Two Sisters
USA | 7' 46"
directed by Magdalena Bermudez
A history of sister portraiture is reanimated by nascent datasets, as portraits dodge derogatory categories by paradoxically inhabiting one and multiple bodies.
Radio Cu Cu
Spain | 20'
directed by Berio Molina
A radio station (Radio cu cu) collects images from video surveillance cameras found in the internet, on which it superimposes its own audio editing.
The images come from all kinds of places: spa & bath houses, homes, streets, factories, radio stations, shops, buildings, and so on. The radio editor and hosts talk about their doubts in regard to the use of this type of images.
Selection #11
INTER-ACTIONS
What is happening between those two?
I Will Always Love You
USA | 3' 27"
directed by Lydia Ricci
The artist tells the story of how love changes for worse or for better using sculptures made from scrap materials collected for over 25 years.
Mute Embrace
Ireland | 2' 54"
directed by Susan Hughes
An encounter with a Lion's Mane jellyfish while swimming in County Down leads to an ambiguous love-letter-style musing upon the sensations in the author's body.
The Amber Thief
USA | 7' 34"
directed by Jonathan Riles
"The Amber Thief" is a short stop-motion animation film and poem that reimagines the predator-prey relationship between a spider and a fly.
Toad, Leaf, Grass, Rock
Italy | 3' 30"
directed by Federica Foglia
A 16mm hybrid visual poem, at the crossroad between intertextuality and documentary. This film "plays" with images in a mysterious way. In the words of Eugenio Montale, weaving a disappearing and deserted suburban landscape into the fabric of images, sounds, and textures of two far-away lovers yearning for each other.
Son Chant
USA | 12'
directed by Vivian Ostrovsky
Going through my mini DVs shot over the past decade, I rediscovered a forgotten night sequence of Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton leaving a brasserie where we had dined together in Montparnasse. The excerpt stayed with me for a while. This prompted me to focus on Chantal’s sound work in her films and her very close collaboration with cellist, Sonia Wieder-Atherton with whom she made more than 20 films. And, since New York, Paris and Moscow were places the three of us had in common, I intertwined some of my images with hers.
Otherness
Canada | 1' 11"
directed by Désirée Jung
A video poem about time and being.
Same / Different / Both / Neither
Brazil | 18' 50"
directed by Adriana Barbosa, Fernanda Pessoa
In a period of isolation, far away from each other, two friends reconnect through video-letters, inspired by the poetic gaze of women experimental filmmakers: Marie Menken, Joyce Wieland, Gunvor Nelson and Yvonne Rainer. Fernanda is a Brazilian living in São Paulo, Adriana is a Mexican-Brazilian living in Los Angeles. They share their inspiration while capturing the reality of these times: the pot-banging protests against Bolsonaro, a home moving, the passing of days that feel all the same, gentrification that won’t stop even during a pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests and the yearning of meeting each other again soon.
Legacy
Canada | 2' 3"
directed by Jack Cochran, Pamela Falkenberg
poem by Fiona Tinwei Lam
"Legacy" creates a memory space using symbolic objects, evocative tableaux, and a variety of digital effects to concretize the wisdom that comes with temporal and emotional distance, creating a fanciful, wry, and occasionally bittersweet postmortem of a relationship that founders on the rocks of cross cultural differences.
Couple
Canada | 3' 30"
directed by Rachel Echenberg
A couple faces each other from individual islands surrounded by water. As the tide goes out, it reveals that they are on a single ground. The doubled mirror image of the action measures the relationship through time and shape.
Selection #12
THREE CITIES
Naples, Miami, Barcelona. Relationships with these three cities.
In Campania, in the Winter
France | 15'
directed by Théo Verprat
When I left Naples I knew it was forever. I will not return there. Yet I left a part of myself there: in these streets, on this beach, under the rubble.
Everything is Hard (But Not All the Time)
USA | 9' 14"
directed by Francis Berry
An experimental documentary showcasing the intersections of art, depression, and self-care in Miami during Miami Art Basel 2021.
The Grains Are Rough Here
Spain | 13' 20"
directed by Claire Rosslyn Wilson
'The Grains Are Rough Here' explores the multi-situated complexities embodied in experiences of migration and transition, while tracing everyday routines at home and in the streets of Barcelona.
Selection #13
SPACE/IDENTITY
How much are you shaped by the space you frequent? How to detourn space and experience it in a different way?
A Liason to a Life No Longer Ordered From Above
Netherlands | 28' 19"
directed by Clara J:son Borg
The film "A liaison to a life no longer ordered from above" is a collaborative research project by artist Clara J:son Borg and artists and dancers Aris Papadopoulos, Christina Karagianni, Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Aspasia Giannoulaki, Markella Ksilogiannopoulou and Christos Fousekis. Together they explored topics around urbanism in the neighbourhood of Nea Ionia in Athens, Greece. They approached the subject of urbanism from a feminist and phenomenological position, treating personal memories and experiences as knowledge. By letting this knowledge be in conversation with theory, storytelling and non-representational movement mapping they built the film's performative patchwork. It consists of strategies of how to operate on a street level, what interhuman relationships the urban provides us and which collective choreographies we move within. A method of working that opened up a space between fiction and fact where remembering, reimagining and becoming put the performers bodies in a process of finding orientation.
Silver Veiled
Germany | 23' 23"
directed by Ginevra Panzetti, Enrico Ticconi
In a series of unveilings, "Silver Veiled" explores the symbolic power of the flag in its capacity to contain multiple values, evoking a contrasting feeling of belonging and separation. The drapes are presented in a silvery grey, cleaned of colours, emblems and coats of arms so as to expose their plastic essence – a blank canvas without connotations where anything can emerge, begin or disappear. A reiteration of phantasmatic figures materializes from under the drapes, recalling a close and ancient kinship between two textile objects: flag and shroud. Freed from the fabric, the coat of arms becomes a handle and a brand at the same time, reminiscent of the wax seal in ancient times. The associative meaning of the flag keeps shifting with the movement of the drape, the body and the camera within the architecture. Based on the choreographic tradition of Flag Waving and its origin into the ancient military praxis, the straight movement of the flag sustains a rhythmic pulse that generates a captivating and hypnotic dispositive. At the same time, the waving of the flag melts into a sinuous dynamic that confuses the edges between body and fabric. A motif which allows the flag to be seen under its full ductile and metamorphic capacity, both in a symbolic and physical sense.
Concrete: Boston City Hall
USA | 24' 04"
directed by Wenhua Shi
During the pandemic, drones flying over the empty city became an over-saturated media coverage fixed our imagination into one way of reading a city/ space. I return to the idea of “ma” empty or open spaces (interval or pause in time).Traditionally, Chinese and Japanese aesthetic principles, reflecting Buddhist spatial ideas, focus on the use of empty or open spaces (“ma” in Japanese). The newest piece, titled Concrete: Boston City Hall, was created with this additional perspective and creates a contrast to legendary documentary filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour long film, City Hall. Here I try to present the meditational quality of the empty city hall, The project was presented by local art organization Non-Event with support from MCC (the Massachusetts Cultural Council).
Selection #14
BEING HUMAN
A bunch of films showing how difficult, sad, crazy, grand and terrific is to be humans.
I Don't Want to Be a Human Anymore
Italy | 10'
directed by Martina Selva
The short shows the evolution of the director, from her childhood to the moment she decides she doesn't want to be a human anymore, resolution both political and provocative. Her story is told alongside that of humanity, the relationship between humans and animals, man's taxonomic obsession who makes us constantly classify, define and ultimately exclude. The short is an ironic outlook on issues such as the anitispecist critic and the search of an identity.
The Tender Place Where The Wolrd Breaks
USA | 12' 52"
directed by Emily Van Loan
I tried for two years not to breathe or touch my body numb the bones settling crooked.
Just be yourself!
A voice breaks like leather cracking.
Thinking is a skill that can be developed
The point to prove it didn’t happen because I’m not the—no one’s the one who would let this happen, bruises blooming and, dishes feathers and bones in the sink and the sky stretched taut black tarp, bloodroot shining and the creeks clotted with trash and it’s all my fault: my fault, I am the tender place where the world breaks.
Dungeon
France | 7' 9"
directed by Jérémy Griffaud
The proposal deals with an eminently characteristic trait of our current society, the desire for celebrity, or to put it differently, the desire to get out of the shadows to enter the light, sometimes even hoping to become this "light". The desire for celebrity seems to win over more and more individuals today; and this phenomenon has largely increased with the multiplication of information via social networks, reality TV, the multiplication of screens, and more generally, with all the strategies put in place by the society of the spectacle.
In the country of oblivion
Canada | 4' 10"
directed by Samuel St. Pierre
A poetic essay that attempts to trace the sensory map of a country through a man’s memories.
The Guy on the Bed
Canada | 3' 50"
directed by Mike Hoolboom
News from another pandemic, the one that ‘changed everything’ before it fell out of the news cycle and collective memory, except for the newly infected, or those who, like myself, managed a new life after death. Based on a text by David Wojnarowicz.
The Last Chimera
Canada | 17' 22"
directed by Joe Hambleton
The Last Chimera is an experimental animation that chronicles how my engagement with fantasy-based media coloured my perception of my surroundings during the pandemic. When the sudden impact of the pandemic left me unmotivated to make art, I sought comfort through nostalgia. This eventually led me back to Japanese Role-Playing Games (JRPG), a preferred genre of videogames from my childhood. I was immediately enthralled by many of the common themes and tropes from JRPG’s. I could see how they shaped my worldview as a teenager, and how much of their ethics I still believe in today. As restrictions relaxed back in the real world and I began to feel more comfortable with expanding my surroundings, the one thing that was immediately apparent was the growing divide between economic classes. Countless homes were undergoing luxury expansions, as encampments began to form in the neighbouring parks. I immediately began to draw parallels back to the JRPG’s fantasy worlds. It was easy to start building a narrative. There were altruistic heroes banding together for the greater good, and villains set at stopping them without reason. I would spend my mornings doomscrolling through news stories and social media posts to continue developing the narrative. I eventually found myself reengaged with my art practice. I began constructing my own virtual environments and populating them with fictionalized characters that reflected my interpretations. It wasn’t till I was very deep in this process that an event awakened me. The level of violence used to evict the encampments was deeply unsettling and shocked me back to reality. The ineffectiveness of armchair activism was clear, and I was left to confront the limitations of my introverted nature. This realization eventually forced me to re-evaluate my use of fiction to create positive change. While there are many examples of media effectively breaking down complex ethics into more digestible narratives, I had to question whether this same approach remained effective for adults who are more inherently immutable. While I believe it is human nature to help one another, I had to consider if creating or engaging with fictional narratives helps satiate this need and helps prevent us from creating real change.
Light Leak
USA | 8' 20"
directed by Nate Dorr
Light is information, a signal more lasting than recollection. If there’s anyone out there to receive the message. Isolated in a sealed apartment, a lone observer regards an outside world outside become increasingly unreal or unreachable. Archaic illuminations, old slides and the pin-lights of the camera obscura, crawl across the walls. Connections fray. Time loses meaning. A science fictional essay film, or its inverse. A rumination on optics, memory, data, and endings.
Reminiscence
France | 6' 19"
directed by Émilie Léveillé
coreography by Margherita Bergamo Meneghini
Based on the musical composition by Rick Cormier (John B. & Me, 1975) and on a quote from St. Augustine's (Confessions, X, 8), the film Reminiscence is the meeting of two women through a fortuitous chain of events, which awakens in them a sensory memory, which exists outside of time. The two women embody an intrinsic vital moment made of emotion, suffering and research. The two girls in white represent their ideas, projections, desires, the purity of disembodied souls. Spaces are empty of people, to underline the suspension of time, but also to contextualize the historic moment of summer 2020 in the center of the city of Paris.
People Just Want to be Robotic
UK | 6' 38"
directed by Vincent Hewett
‘People just want to be robotic’ is a collaboration with AI text generation from InferKit and voice generation from Kukarella. The work draws on diverse materials from; my dreams, video diary, Jungian studies, (Prof. Natolis lecture ‘Blake and Jung’ in particular), huachuma plant medicine and gong meditation. I have included inserts from my painting series inspired by the mathematical variations of the diamond theory (Prof. Cullinane). In ‘People just want to be robotic’ I wanted to explore the human gaze, the urge to stay with an unfolding moment, an experience I found much intensified by the plant medicine Huachuma. I also wanted to experiment with giving the AI my textual notes and dreams and allowing it to generate its own piece from that departure point, subsequently deleting myself from the final output. With the AI voices, I use familiar call centre ‘your call is important to us’ voices and insert deeper layers of meaning into their mundanity. Overall, I think this work speaks to what it is to be human in the algorithmically connected/disconnected world of ours. For me, the piece contemplates the present and future in which we do/shall find ourselves; whether we are manipulated into becoming part of ‘the machine’ or whether AI technologies will become more human and allow us in turn, to adapt in new ways. A further question I have is the thread of whether we have free will, how we make our choices, what our ‘programming’ is, and how this effects our choices. Even in a very simple geometric system such as the Diamond Theory (which inspires my painting practice), there are an astounding number of choices/combinatorics involved. We may as well consider the world an unlimited ocean. Yet, we know our perceptions fall short of incorporating this multiplicity.
Selection #15
AWARENESS
Where do you choose to put your consciousness?
Memoria
UK | 2' 22"
directed by Elin Johnston
A Pilgrimage of Mind and Body: Memory, place, and loss, are evoked in a contemplative ode of remembrance, expressing the sense of presence and emotion that remains imbued and embedded within particular conjunctions of time, location, and lived experience. The poetry film also reflects upon how, although time is without form, its true measure slips away, simultaneously imperceptible, indeterminate, beyond reach.
Breath
Germany | 3' 39"
directed by Lilian Rob
A YouTube video, which is supposed to help the viewer against panic attacks and anxiety by focusing on his or her own breathing rhythm, served as the source material, which was graphically altered, filled with words and this way interpreted as a fleeting diagram of breath.
Corps Minéral
Canada | 5'
directed by Charline Dally, Gabrielle Harnois-Blouin
Inspired by geology, science fiction, and documentary archives, corps
minéral integrates a narrative co-written by Gabrielle HB and Charline Dally (le désert mauve). The film connects the spaces of our lives and of our sensible experiences with geological phenomena of immeasurable temporality. The layers of memory, whether they are contained in the rock or in our cells, are part of a cycle from sedimentation to disintegration. The work invites us to apprehend these processes with attention and empathy in order to consider their slowness as a means to heal even the deepest fractures.
Return
UK | 50"
directed by Raluca Popa
poetry by Simona Nastac
A lyrical meditation on the Anthropocene that mingles the intimate and the eternal, the biological and the inanimate, the domestic with a sense of deep time. A fragile poem dreaming of transcending the darkness of the present. The abstract drawings originate from Raluca Popa's ongoing preoccupation with Richard Tuttle's work.
Engramme
Canada | 14' 46"
directed by An-Laurence Higgins, Aaron Pollard
“I am terrified by the idea of altering my memories.”
Engrams are imprints on the brain left by our experiences. This video essay began as a conversation between An-Laurence Higgins and Aaron Pollard, two Montreal artists of different generations, with diverging cultural and linguistic backgrounds. This conversation centers on a shared preoccupation with the ways in which memory shapes identity, how the stories we hold onto shift over time and space and how seemingly indelible experiences are transformed and lost to our minds.
faint forgone forgotten
Hungary | 9'
directed by Roger Deutsch
A memoir disguised as a love song. A love song disguised as a memoir.
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